Nothing to Fear
by DarkScales
Summary: Keith and Red get ambushed by a gang of bounty hunters. Luckily, they have backup now. [Side Story, set post-Gotta Run Another Night.]


**Summary:** Keith and Red get ambushed by a gang of bounty hunters. Luckily, they have backup now.

 **Rating:** K+ for canon-typical violence.

 **Notes:** So, the sequel to Gotta Run Another Night is kinda stalled right now, but I feel bad for not posting anything in so long... have some largely plotless fun?

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the fic!

* * *

"One. Day," Keith hissed under his breath, muscles straining as he hauled himself onto the rooftop with clawed fingertips. "Just _one day_ when we're not getting shot at; is it really so much to ask for?"

 _Hold on,_ Red murmured, banked fire lending heat to otherwise calm words. _Pride is coming._

 _Well, they should move a little quicker!_ Keith reached for his bayard, but aborted the movement partway through when he remembered that he hadn't brought it with him. Great. He definitely wasn't going to make that mistake again.

At least he wasn't completely unarmed, though.

A sharp _bang_ entirely unlike the sound of a blaster discharging ripped through the air. Keith ducked a bullet (an actual, physical _bullet,_ and who even used those anymore?) that smashed into the smooth tiles off to one side, sending up a spray of shards. There was a roar of a jetpack, sunlight gleaming off polished metal, and then–

" _Vannek!_ " The grip of his dagger was worn and familiar in his palm, blade flashing as he jumped over a sweeping tail, barely spun out of the path of another bullet, and stabbed a diving drone clean through. In a moment, he was running, heart in his throat as he watched plasma blasts sear the distant sky and felt the echoes of Red's fury prickling in his skin.

Engines whined, a sleek speeder drawing up beside him. Keith didn't think, just acted, and before the bounty hunter had time to bring her weapon to bear, he'd leapt off the roof and was grappling with her for the controls.

"What are you, insane?!" she shouted, hardly audible over the wind, the speeder swerving wildly and almost crashing into a billboard. "You're going to-!"

Keith yanked back the joystick to send them into a climb, soaring over the walls of an open-air mall, and managed to flip the speeder long enough to break her grip. She tumbled down with a shriek, splashing into a decorative pond as jewel-toned fish scattered. Keith couldn't help but grin as he looked back just long enough to see her thrash her way to the surface. Satisfied, he gunned the throttle as far as it would go, easily outstripping the rest of his pursuers.

 _Cub! Unhurt?_ Red's face wasn't physically capable of changing expression, but Keith would've sworn that her eyes seemed to brighten as he came into view. Rearing, she snatched a drone out of the air and crunched it into a useless husk, tail flicking out to knock another into the ground.

 _I'm fine. We need to move._ A grim feeling lay thick in Keith's gut as he saw how the remaining bounty hunters clustered directly in front of nearby houses. Some had even broken down a door and were reappearing at the windows, and Keith didn't want to think about what could've happened to the families who lived inside. Red couldn't blast the bounty hunters without hitting the buildings behind, which didn't even consider the unacceptably high level of collateral damage.

 _Agreed. Pride arriving soon._ Red crouched, leaping out of the way of a massive net that spun through where she would've been. When she landed, the nearby buildings shook.

Keith aimed the speeder at the hovering ship that had launched the net, and engaged the autopilot with a flick of a switch. _Catch!_

There was a flare of _what are you doing no don't you dare stupid cub what are you doing_ before Keith jumped off, Red hastily skipped back to catch him, and–

All the breath was knocked out clean out of his lungs as Keith landed in her open mouth, rolled across the floor, and collided with the doors to the cockpit. They had opened for him before he even staggered to his feet, shoulder aching.

"Okay," Keith wheezed, "maybe that wasn't such a good idea."

A screen opened with Pidge in Green's cockpit, the scenery behind them rushing by too fast for Keith to pinpoint where they were. " _Keith, seriously? You couldn't stay out of trouble for_ one day?"

Keith stabbed his finger at the screen. "You," he gasped, still catching his breath, "you act like I went _looking_ for them. I didn't! They just came out of nowhere!"

" _Who are they, anyway?_ " Lance had a streak of glittering paint on his cheek, flecks of silver in his hair. Keith didn't want to know. " _And why are they shooting at us?_ "

"Bounty hunters," Keith told them, words a rush. "They're bounty hunters. Guys, watch out for EMPs, chances are that'll be a last-ditch resort but I don't think Pidge has the shielding up on anybody else yet but Green, right?" He fought the urge to sag with relief when Blue and Green came into view, dropping out of the clouds with weapons blazing.

" _Gotcha._ " Blue clamped teeth into a second hovering ship before it could evade, jerked her head, and sent it spinning into the distant wilderness. " _How many?_ "

Keith did a quick headcount. "One left in the doorway of the house with the brown roof, at least two in the windows of the house with the tan roof, and that's it."

" _Inside the tan roof? I've got them._ " Green rippled to invisibility, and Pidge was a green and white speck as she dropped to the ground. She'd put her armor on at some point, bayard glowing in her hand, and Keith saw her begin to circle around the backs of the houses. Once she was almost in view, she became invisible herself, and Keith grinned.

It was pretty cool, having a team that would actually back him up.

Two more screens opened, Hunk still panting with exertion and Shiro's hair distinctly ruffled. " _Sorry we're late, we had to run basically all the way across town. Nice job with the speeder, by the way_ – _last we saw, that bounty hunter was stealing towels from one of the mall stores._ " Hunk snickered, grinning wide. " _Man, good luck to those security guards._ "

" _I would prefer, though_ –" Shiro sounded amused despite himself, lips twitching up at the edges, "– _if you tried to avoid pulling risky stunts like that again._ "

"Wait," Keith said, keeping an eye out for any more bounty hunters they'd missed, "you guys were there?"

Shiro's lips twitched again. " _Table with the diamond-patterned umbrella in the corner, halfway under the awnings. Probably why you didn't see us._ "

" _Hold on, why was a bounty hunter stealing towels? Did I miss something?_ " Keith could see Blue crouched on the ground as Lance, kneeling atop her head, sniped the bounty hunter in the brown-roofed house's doorway. At the same moment, the shots from the windows of the tan-roofed house abruptly stopped, then Pidge leaned out the window with bayard waving like a war banner.

" _Yeah,_ " Pidge chimed in, climbing out the window and letting her jetpacks take her down, " _why_ was _that bounty hunter stealing towels? And what speeder?_ "

" _I would like to know as well,_ " Allura added, brow raised as she appeared on a fifth screen with Coran at her shoulder. " _What happened, Keith?_ " She didn't appear too annoyed, more exasperated, tinged with a slightest edge of humor. " _Didn't you say you were going to be visiting the market?_ "

Keith buried his head in his hands. "I was," he groaned, muffled through his fingers. "They came out of nowhere. Ambushed me and Red at the same time."

" _And how was a speeder involved?_ "

Lifting his head from his hands, Keith and Red fell into formation with the others as they exited the atmosphere. Space yawned star-specked as they banked toward the Castle, which was in orbit around the planet. "Running would've taken too long," he explained, "and one of the bounty hunters had a speeder. I borrowed it."

Red sent him a memory from her eyes: the speeder smashing into the engines of the ship that had launched the net, both of them going up in a brilliant blaze of flame. _Borrowed, sure._

"Fine, I stole it," Keith amended, rolling his eyes. "She didn't like that, so I dumped her in a pond. That's probably why she needed towels."

" _Holy_ –" Pidge made a choked-off sound of laughter. " _That is_ amazing, _holy quiznak, it sounds just like an action movie!_ "

Shiro let out a tiny snort. " _The splash got a security guard in the face. He definitely didn't like that, either._ "

" _Sounds like you had an eventful day._ " Coran's mustache was shaking as his eyes danced with amusement. " _What about everyone else, eh? Maybe not as exciting as Keith's, but interesting?_ "

" _Well,_ " Lance started, smirking, " _there_ was _this cute Voskavii…_ "

Pidge rolled her eyes. " _Wow, did you actually not get rejected this time?_ "

Lance sputtered. " _Hey, I'll have you know xe was stood up by xir date, so I offered to replace him and we had a very nice time together._ "

" _Boring,_ " Pidge said. " _Meanwhile, I found all the parts I needed for my next project, so I'm feeling pretty accomplished right now._ "

" _Hey, that's great!_ " Hunk held up a semi-translucent bag filled with an assortment of fruits and vegetables, maybe half of which Keith recognized. Hunk's tone was practically giddy with excitement. " _Shiro and I got groceries, since I was getting kinda sick of food goo, and turns out the mall has an absolutely amazing frozen thing that's kinda like ice cream, but not. I'm gonna try and make it when we get back!_ "

Shiro huffed out a laugh. " _He spent almost half an hour talking to the chef and walked away with another bag full of ingredients,_ " he said in a faux-stage whisper. " _There's two more bags behind my seat and I think something like three behind his._ "

Allura smiled, looking pleased. " _Good. I'm glad you all had a good time._ " She paused, mouth tugging up on one side. " _Well, until the bounty hunters, anyway._ "

"Not my fault," Keith groaned under a chorus of laughter, but there was no real annoyance in him. Instead, happiness coiled up warm in his chest as he watched his team, a sense of contentment that he'd never felt anywhere else.

Yeah, he decided. It was good to have a Pride.

And they made a pretty good team.


End file.
